Mw5 Economy

I seem to be having a bit of trouble with the intricacies of MW5 economy and would appreciate some sage advise.
Apologies in advance if some of my questions may sound 'simple'.

1. I pretty much comprehend that working for a particular employer will increase your negotiation points but is there a particular formula to allocate your negotiation points for the highest value? For example, each point of damage insurance is greater than each point of payout, but only pays for damage taken so if you have a high amount of insurance but take a small amount of damage the extra points value is wasted. And salvage points are needed to recover high value items from the mission like mechs, which it seems, give the greatest 'bang for your buck'. But if you allocate a high amount to salvage and there are no high value items to recover, your total payout would be of less value.

2. The use of 'cold storage' seems to be important to economy since when mechs are stored your monthly and travel costs go down, but when stored, all equipment is removed and it can cost a considerable amount of time and money to re-equip each mech. Is there a practical method to utilize cold storage other than just to make room for purchasing new mechs?
NOTE: Also, for some reason when mechs are placed in cold storage they seem to take damage at varying degrees, which of course costs money and time to re-repair them???

3. I also understand that repairs done in industrial areas are cheaper than those done in war zones, but does the travel cost and time outweigh the discounted industrial hub value?

4. Finally, the marketplace is an interesting tool. It seems you can sell a fully equipped mech and buy it back for exactly the same price, which is cheaper than sending it to cold storage to make room for purchasing a new mech???. Can you sell a mech at a particular hub, do some missions, and return to re-purchase it at the same value or will it disappear like other mechs?

Sorry about being long winded about this but I sure would appreciate some guidance here.
Peace

Thanks for the input.
I could swear I read, somewhere on this forum, that the sell and buy price were the same in MW5.
I know you are absolutely correct about the half price thing on MWO though.
I was more interested to know if a mech you sold would stay where you sold it, but I wouldn't want to pay double to get it back anyway.
Peace

1. Always check the type of mission and the mechs that you're bringing. You'll be able to gauge how much damage you might take. For e.g., Raid missions tend to damage me the most 'cause I like to sweep the entire area even when not necessary. So, I puts 2 points into Damage Insurance. Also, some Hero mechs like the Orion Protector and King Crab Kaiju have Ferro armour and the like. Therefore, repairing them is costs more than other mechs. Take this into account as well. If you bring such mechs into the battle, take 1 point of damage coverage.

As for negotiating for salvage and not getting any mechs, destroying the mechs' CT and making it go "poof" in blue smoke will more likely remove it from the salvage pool whereas headshots have a higher chance of putting them there.

2. Cold Storage is a place like a museum to me. I keep 12 mechs ready so that I can do the multi-part missions easily. The cold storage is there just to store mechs that I like but not using or just to sell from there. As for the damage induced there, I always thought of it like a valet-parking guy who scratches your car by being careless

Refitting the mechs after you pull them from storage is to be done in industrial hubs. The cost isn't high to make you go bankrupt unless you're doing it over and over while your negotiation for salvage and payout is low.

3. You need to calculate approximately how much it takes for the repairs and the days spent doing it vs travel costs and days spent in space. If the latter is beneficial, then do that. If not, do the former. There isn't always a best way here. The early areas tend not to matter so much. But the northern regions of Steiner and Kurita space become really expensive to conduct repairs in conflict zones 'cause you have better mechs and the penalty in those zones are higher than the ones elsewhere. There are conflict zones where the penalty for repairs are 300%. That's when you should jump to an industrial system and finish up all your work before jumping back.

4. Market prices aren't the same when buying. I don't know how it is for you or maybe you haven't noticed the difference. Even with maximum reputation, the buying price is higher and selling price is lower than what the items are actually worth. Also, the inventory changes when you leave that system. You might not find your mech and equipment there anymore.

For damage insurance I have watch what I have roughly each mission in damage costs and try to cover that as close as I can and put the other points somewhere else.
If I am at a very good standing with the contractor or have a high salvage value from the beginning I spend points there else I spend my points in cash

For example if I had the last three mission damages to repair that are around 500.000 Credits I would try to aim the ensurance around that value.
When the salvage allready starts with 5-8 points I like to put more into that. Overall I would say only spend point there if it will allow you to get a lot of salvage or you need to salvage stuff, like when you run out of a certain weapon and don't want to buy them on the market. I haven't done the calculation but it feels like when you run out of medium lasers its cheaper to salvage some and not buy them. They are so common that there should allways be some to salvage.

Thanks for the input.
I could swear I read, somewhere on this forum, that the sell and buy price were the same in MW5.
I know you are absolutely correct about the half price thing on MWO though.
I was more interested to know if a mech you sold would stay where you sold it, but I wouldn't want to pay double to get it back anyway.
Peace

No problem, anytime. I do not know how it is in MWO, i stopped playing MWO year or years ago. I was talking about MW5 Mercs. Mechs and equipment you sell stay in that particular industrial hub only certain amount of time then disapear.

Thanks for the well thought out suggestions.
I'll consider the economy aspect as part of the virtual realism.

As far as the cold storage conversation, I'm still on the fence about the selling and buying back thing.
This is part of a conversation from another post:

Necroconvict, on 02 January 2020 - 08:14 AM, said:

An annoying work around we have currently found... is you can sell active mechs from the mechbay, and then buy them back for the exact same price.. and not stripped, and I think with the same paint job?

So you sell a mech or two, then pull mechs from cold storage... sell them, and then you buy back the actual mechs you usually use for the same price you sold them for... and now you've cleaned your cold storage, and you didn't have to strip, and then equip your mechs.

Selling from cold storage would make way more sense.

I read similar posts from players who seem to be using this method to save the cost and time to re-equip mechs out of cold storage.

I think I'll 'sacrifice' one of my less used chassis to experiment with this method and report back with the results.
Thanks for all of the input.
Peace

There's no point for the above mentioned method anymore, since you can now sell mechs directly from cold storage. But yes, a mech you sell can be reacquired directly for the same price without any changes made to it.
Mechs you sell, fly away and return, will be reset to their stock loadout - if they are still available. There is that exploit where if you have the K-9 available for purchase, you buy it, strip it and sell it again. Fly away, return, find the K-9 restocked, buy it, strip it, and so forth.

I just put all my points into salvage.. most missions have mechs you can recover, even if they are just the smallest lights mechs, and that is still more valuable than anything else..

The problem is that often, a good mech is more expensive than you can salvage with points, so if you wanna farm cbills and mechs, you need to become a hero with one faction to get the maximum salvage points.